Writers @ Work announces its 2008 Fellowship winners!
The Writers @ Work (where hip meets lit according to their website) is a conference held in Utah June 23rd-27th. Yes, just days after my birthday and I didn’t win free tuition from a pool of hundreds. So sad. Anyway, here are the winners. Go here to check out more information about the conference. It looks really cool.
(from their website www.writersatwork.org)
Winner: Margot Wizansky, Brookline, MA, for “Cosmography”
About “Cosmography,” Ms. Addonizio had the following comments:
“The author of ‘Cosmography’ has a gift for narrative and for language which creates an experience of lived life for the reader. I admired this writer’s ability to convincingly render the voice of an eighteenth-century midwife in the ambitious opening poem. Like the description of a steak in ‘Breakfast at the Retirement Home,’ the writing here is often ‘luscious, blood-rare.’ ”
1st Honorable Mention: Keegan Goodman, Chicago, IL, for “Four Poems (’Residence’ and others)”
About “Four Poems: (”Residence” and others):
“From an autobiography written by a dead man to a woman attempting to construct human beings out of grease fat and coffee grounds, these prose poems create their own marvelous and off-kilter worlds.”
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I don’t know about you guys, but that first honorable mention sounds awfully interesting. Russell Edson-esque is what I’m hoping for, but we’ll see. These winners will be published in an upcoming Quarterly West, and will receive free tuition to the Writers at Work conference. The poetry winners were chosen by Kim Addonizio, fiction by Steve Almond, nonfiction by Abigail Thomas. The other winners were (fiction)
Winner: Ben Roberts, Ogden, UT, for “The Three Nephites”
About “The Three Nephites,” Mr. Almond had this to say:
“My God. I was absolutely blown away by this story, which does what every great short story must: it creates its own world and sucks the reader into that world and horrifies us and at the same time (and this is the miracle, I think) makes us never want to leave. The voice is absolutely fearless, ecstatic, and dangerously wise. I could feel my heart thumping as I read the last line, and for a long time after.”
(not exactly a scathing review) and nonfiction:
Winner: Valerie Due, San Diego, CA (Yay San Diego), for “The Skinning Board”
About “The Skinning Board,” Ms. Thomas has the following comments:
“I love the emotional restraint coupled with the ravishing prose of the piece. It serves so perfectly the young narrator whose initiation into the harsh realities of life–and death–on a farm is being presented here.”